My salutes to the whole communityI'm a total newbie on this topic so I beg your pardon for any unwanted wrongfoot on my message!I'm beginnning a job of audio cd archiving, there are approx 100 cds to rip, my goal is to have them set on WMA Lossless as I find myself more comfortable with the basic WMP.

The cds feature recordings from early 70s to 2008, most of them date back to 80s and 90s, cd are printed from original digital mastering done at the times no real remasters except for five or six cds which are 24bit remastered from tape masters of late 70s/ early 80s.

My questions:-Does it make sense if I encode the wavs up to 24bit-44.1KHz to save room for storing the whole 16 bit data?-Can anybody suggest a player which accurately reproduces the files , in the case that the default WMP does fail as an accurate player?